Roe vs Wade - It's not that simple

Roe vs Wade has been overturned and the world has started melting down. 

Well that is what you would think from the hyperbole and bullshit pushed on Twitter and the frankly stupid protests from the fringe in the US. 

Let’s start with the basics the overturning of Roe has not “outlawed abortion in the US”. This is a ridiculous and factually incorrect statement which has been pushed by much of the media and many allegedly educated people. You know the very people who have been worrying about the emergence of a post truth world whilst doing more to create it than anyone else over the last ten years. 

For the record and for all the thickos and liars out there the Supreme Court’s decision has not outlawed or banned abortion it has simply returned the decision to the people. They basically decided Roe was an invalid interpretation of the US constitution and said it is up to the people via the political system to decide what to do about it. So now the individual states will decide based upon what the majority want i.e. democracy. 

You may support abortion like me or not but any democrat should demand that key decisions be debated and decided by the people. It is that process that allows us to mediate between different groups and settle on a decision if only for a short period. It is what gives democracy meaning otherwise it is just people turning up to vote to decide on whether taxes should go up and down marginally. That is exactly what we have had for decades across much of the West and it is why so many people are unhappy. The outsourcing of key decisions to the unelected and the dilution of meaningful democracy. 

I would argue that the reason why the UK has a more settled position on abortion is because it has had an open debate and even discussed amendment on numerous occasions. No one has felt that their views were not taken into account as anyone could in theory get the relevant support and change the law. It is exactly that which the Supreme Court robbed the American people of in 1973. Even if people wanted to change the law they couldn’t because the USSC had effectively enshrined it as an unalienable right under the constitution. 
Now you wouldn’t know any of this if you were following much of the commentariat in Europe who jumped in immediately after the announcement with the usual vacuous verbal diarrhoea. In their minds this was an attack on a basic human right (apparently babies don’t have them) and that Attwood was right and the US is turning into something akin to the Handmaids tale. Needless to say they made no effort to talk about the above or what Roe actually meant on the ground. 

Ref: Wikipedia 

Even now post the USSC decision abortion remains legal in the majority of states. As Europeans preach on about how wonderful abortion is and how bad the decision is remember that in most states a woman can abort up 24 weeks which is 6 months. In some you can even abort all the way to term - that is until the moment the baby pops out. So perhaps people should take a moment and before opining glance down at their own children and grand children and think about having them being torn out of the womb at 6 or 9 months. Now compare that to most European countries where abortion except for in a few exceptions is legally limited to between 12 - 14 weeks. If you don't feel uncomfortable fair enough but I know I do.

Photo: A new born baby and a premature baby of six months 

To conclude nuance is largely lost in this day and age especially on social media but on a subject as ethically and morally complex as abortion we should expect more from the chattering classes who like to think they are far better than us. From our political leadership we should demand more and if they can't deliver more then perhaps more silence would be a blessing because I for one am tired of the dull-witted ignorant virtue signalling which they deploy on a near daily basis.